ST. KILDA FROM WITHOUT 185 



ornithologists that St. Kilda reserves its chief fascina- 

 tion. In no other spot in British waters, not even 

 excepting the marvellous Noup of Noss in Shetland, 

 do sea-birds of many kinds congregate in anything like 

 the same numbers. It is the last recorded haunt of 

 the Great Auk, and the breeding-place of ninety-nine 

 at least of every hundred Fulmars that nest within the 

 limits of the British Isles. 



The Fulmar, which is the chief source of the 

 islanders' wealth, supplying to quote an old writer 

 ' oil for the lamp, down for the bed, the most salubrious 

 food, and the most efficacious ointment, and possessing 

 a thousand other virtues,' is a typical representative of 

 its class, the Tubinarides, which varying in size from 

 ' Mother Carey's Chickens/ with bodies less than a Spar- 

 row's, to the great wandering Albatross, with a stretch of 

 wings of sixteen or seventeen feet, are all formed on the 

 same general lines, fitting them for a life spent almost 

 entirely on the wing. The most marked characteristics 

 of the family, next to the great development of wing 

 muscles, are the nostrils, which, instead of being, as in 

 most other birds, mere slits in the beak, take the form of 

 prominent onen tubes, through which the air a free 

 current of which is, it is easy to understand, essential 

 for long untiring flight passes to the inner air-vessels 

 unchecked. In some of the tribes the tube-openings 

 are at the side of the beak, ending, as in the case of the 

 great white Albatross, with the upward curl of a cavalry 

 officer's moustache. In others, the tubes run straight 

 out like pistol barrels, single or double, resting and 



